The digital disruption is creating unforeseen events, such as new competitors, products and services that threaten the performance and positioning of consolidated players. Big data and analytics prove themselves, through successful user cases, as the answer to intercept the demand, prevent churn, draw an integrated view of the customer, manage
Multi-echelon inventory optimization is ever more a requirement in this era of globalization, which is both a boon and bane for manufacturing companies. Optimizing pricing is also important. Global reach allows these companies to expand to new territories but at the same time increases the competition on their home turf.
Every grocery store must be laser focused on those things that maintain a competitive edge in this saturated market. In Bedford, NH, with a population around 21,000, there are six grocery stores and two mass merchants who sell groceries. If Bedford is like the national average, these food retailers are
.@philsimon channels his inner Queen Latifa.
I usually try to avoid political or religious debates ... but as an impartial data analyst, it is possible to analyze data about something, without entering into the debate. In this blog post, I try to walk that fine line, and analyze data about the political leanings of religious groups in the US.
Any subject matter expert (SME) who has written test questions will tell you it is a lot harder and much more time consuming than they initially expected. Many believe they can simply write down any topic-related question that pops in their mind. Easy, right? Not so fast. Questions should be
Data access and data privacy are often fundamentally at odds with each other. Organizations want unfettered access to the data describing customers. Meanwhile, customers want their data – especially their personally identifiable information – to remain as private as possible. Organizations need to protect data privacy by only granting data access to authorized
My presentation at SAS Global Forum 2016 was titled "Writing Packages: A New Way to Distribute and Use SAS/IML Programs." The paper was published in the conference proceedings several months ago, but I recently recorded a short video that gives an overview of using and creating packages in SAS/IML 14.1:
Some weeks have passed since the United Kingdom voted, by a margin of 52 per cent for and 48 per cent against, to leave the European Union, the organization it's been a leading member of since 1973. The tumultuous global reaction to the vote has those of us in information
Applying analytics to IoT data provides opportunities for cities to use information from sensors, citizens and connected infrastructure in unprecedented ways.
Carlos Pinheiro is talented. One afternoon Carlos stood in front of a group of marketers including myself, and shared social network analysis using our data. Yes, the analysis took talent, but the real brilliance was that Carlos presented the information in a way where we all left the meeting with
A long time ago, I worked for a company that had positioned itself as basically a third-party “data trust” to perform collaborative analytics. The business proposition was to engage different types of organizations whose customer bases overlapped, ingest their data sets, and perform a number of analyses using the accumulated
What would come to mind if you were told that you have to attend a SAS training course? Perhaps, you have a vision of an instructor sitting at the front of a classroom, endlessly reading PowerPoint slides verbatim in a monotonous voice while you sit there baffled, wondering what is
In a scatter plot, the regions where observations are packed tightly are areas of high density. A contour plot or heat map of a bivariate kernel density estimate (KDE) is one way to visualize regions of high density. A SAS customer asked whether it is possible to use SAS to
I’m an avid open water swimmer. In order to succeed in open water races I must do two things: I must sight properly in order to swim the straightest line possible in the right direction. The straighter the line, the less I have to swim. I must use a powerful,
Were you the kid who sat there analyzing the amusement park map before entering the park, planning out how you could visit the most rides in the least amount of time? If so, then this blog's for you, my data analyst kindred spirit! And to get you in the mood,
This week Hillary Clinton became the first woman to be nominated for president of the US by a major political party. Although this is a first for the US, many other countries have already passed this milestone. In fact, 60 countries have already elected women as presidents and prime ministers.
The way your graph looks can make all the difference ... two people can graph the exact same data in essentially the same way, but one of the two graphs can be perceived as much better than the other. Hopefully reading my blogs will help you create the better graph!
Why they will still play a valuable role in organizational data-management and -integration efforts.
Ist Ihnen das auch schon mal passiert? Sie radeln mit Ihrem Fahrrad zügig durch Gegend, und plötzlich werden Sie scheinbar mühelos von einem anderen Radfahrer überholt. Keuchend sehen Sie dem anderen hinterher und wundern sich über die unglaubliche Fitness des vermeintlich untrainierten oder älter aussehenden Rasers. Erst auf den zweiten
Once upon a time, the only way to buy and sell advertising inventory was based on the relationship between advertiser and publisher. The exchange was manual, with advertisers paying publishers an agreed-upon price for every impression. The process involved a lot of phone calls, spreadsheets, negotiation and re-negotiation, all of
Today, I was in a conversation about using Hadoop (a big data platform) for master data management (MDM). I still find it amazing when we have the discussion of what systems feed another system. Many of our friends have spent years creating MDM for customer, product, etc. with success. I'm a
In the spirit of our “40 and forward” theme to celebrate 40 years of SAS, this blog focuses on David Dickey, an accomplished SAS user since 1974 and a SAS instructor since 1981. He actually co-wrote the original Time Series SAS course in 1981, and helped with the most recent
A kernel density estimate (KDE) is a nonparametric estimate for the density of a data sample. A KDE can help an analyst determine how to model the data: Does the KDE look like a normal curve? Like a mixture of normals? Is there evidence of outliers in the data? In
In my last post, I talked about how to observe the impact of modernisation through a data quality lens. I asked you to consider the quality of your legacy data and what that means on the "shiny new toy" you intend to buy in the future. In this post, I
One of my favorite quotes is: "You can't believe everything you read on the Internet" - Abe Lincoln, 1868. And that is especially true when it comes to graphs and statistics. Hardly a day goes by without me seeing a bad graph that misrepresents the data (either intentionally or unintentionally) .
SAS is kicking off a new event Sept. 12-14 in Las Vegas called the Analytics Experience. It’s actually not completely new. In the past, we’ve held our annual Analytics and Premier Business Leadership Series conferences in the fall. But as the industry landscape continues to change – SAS continues to
Ever hear the phrase: "If the mountain won't come to you, you must go to the mountain"? Well, at SAS, we bring the mountain to you. The Analytics Fast Track™ for SAS®, affectionately called “rolling SAS,” is a partner program between SAS and Intel that showcases the incredible performance of
Last week I read an interesting paper by Bob Rodriguez: "Statistical Model Building for Large, Complex Data: Five New Directions in SAS/STAT Software." In it, Rodriguez summarizes five modern techniques for building predictive models and highlights recent SAS/STAT procedures that implement those techniques. The paper discusses the following high-performance (HP)
Slack is a tremendously popular app for team collaboration. At its core, it's an open messaging app that allows team members to communicate with each other in real time. It works well with "startup"-style teamwork, which requires constant communication among people who aren't always located together. I've heard a lot
